Luis Binks: From Isolation to Scotland Debut

Luis Binks sits under the palm trees in La Manga, Scotland training in the background, and shakes his head as he tells the story. Every footballer has a journey. His sounds like a fever dream.

At 25, the Brondby centre-half and captain is on the brink of a Scotland debut against Slovenia on Saturday, a vacancy appearing in the heart of Sebastien Pocognoli’s defence after Grant Hanley and John Souttar were moved on when the Belgian replaced Steve Clarke. Binks, eligible through a grandparent from Dunbar, is one of eight uncapped players thrown into this new era.

New manager. New faces. New stories. His stands out.

He rewinds to Montreal, early 2020. February into March. He was 18, freshly out of Tottenham, desperate to get away from academy football and into something that felt real.

“I'd been at Tottenham since I was very young, but I just wanted to go and play first football. That was my biggest thing, to not get caught up in the whole youth system. I feel that if you get caught in that, it's not real football. I wanted to test myself.”

So he left the comfort of London for MLS and Montreal Impact, where his manager was Thierry Henry. Not a poster on the wall. The actual Thierry Henry.

He had barely arrived when the world shut down.

“I'd signed in February and then we went into Covid lockdown in March,” he recalls. “I hadn't yet found an apartment. I was in one hotel and Thierry was in another. The one I was in was then shut down.”

Suddenly, the teenager was about to be shunted to an airport hotel, isolated on the edge of the city.

“He was staying at the Ritz on his own. They wanted to move me to a hotel by the airport and I didn't want to go because there was nothing there. It felt like prison, almost. One day I get a call from him, saying: ‘Do you want to move to where I am? You can go on the other floor’.”

The Ritz-Carlton in Montreal is a five-star bubble of chandeliers and quiet luxury, 129 rooms of polished calm. During that spell, it housed exactly two people: Henry and Binks.

“I'd go for runs in the morning and he'd be sat in the reception on his own. When I'd get back from the run, he'd still be sat there. I'd spend a few hours with him, just trying to pick his brains.”

The images come in flashes. An empty lobby. The greatest player in Arsenal’s history alone on a chair. The kid from Tottenham trying not to waste the moment.

“I remember one night I was sat in my room just playing PlayStation and he rings me and goes, ‘Do you want to get a pizza?’ There's me and him driving around Montreal looking for a pizza. It's a bit surreal, but that was how it was.”

He tells it now almost casually, as if he’s talking about a team-mate, not a global icon.

“I'm saying it now like it's just anybody, but there's a big aura around him. I was nervous at the time, but I asked him who's the best defender he's played with and against and why and it was a good time.”

The details blur, but one name stays sharp.

“It's a bit of a blur now, but I always remember him talking about Sol Campbell and just saying what made him great and how I could improve as a defender.

“I owe a lot to him because he gave me my first chance in senior football.”

From lockdown nights at the Ritz with Henry to a fight for a first Scotland cap in Spain, Binks has already lived a career’s worth of stories. Now he wants the next chapter to start with a national anthem and a debut that proves those strange, surreal months in Montreal really were the making of him.